How to make friends after moving away with young children?

[Twosheep]

We recently moved 100 miles away (DH, me, 2 kids age 4 & 9) to a new area

We love it here, but I’m feeling a bit lonely! We don’t have near neighbours at our house, so need to be more proactive to make friends

The kids are in new schools but have to go to breakfast and late club, so I don’t see the parents at school run time very often

I’m doing some part time work from home so that’s no help. DH works from home too and is socially pretty useless! I’m not useless, I’ve just not been in this situation before..

The 9 year old could have play dates and I’ve encouraged her to ask, but she’s shy, to be fair it’s only been 2 months

Can anyone suggest good ways to make friends? Feeling a bit despondent and like I’m letting my kids down!

Can you sign your children up to some after school
clubs and see if that helps with meeting people? Mine go to scouts, trampolining, swimming etc and there are always opportunities to speak to other parents at pick up/drop off or volunteer to help
at the groups

Try again with play dates for both of them, pick two friends each and have them all round at once and invite parents to stay. Are you on the class WhatsApp groups? If not can you ask school reception to see if they can put you in contact with anyone on them?

Class WhatsApp, playdates and clubs as pp mentioned

Are there any school events coming up? Sports day, assembly etc?

Hopefully your kids will get invited to parties - in our school Reception parties are usually whole class though that may not be the case everywhere - and you can meet that way.

Agree with cubs type thing or sports.. generally they're always looking for volunteers too and a great way to connect to a community..
Other volunteering? If ur only working part time could you help out at school? Or look at community noticeboard... Library? Foodbank ....Otherwise get a dog ! You will definitely meet people that way . .